Asmundre flew back up the ridge. The cold had grown more intense, but he hardly noticed. This was bad. Very, very bad. How would he explain this to his father? To Lillian?

The stars shone overhead, sharp points like some giant had poked holes in the steel sky, and the path upward reduced to a dark streak through the junk. Every time his foot hit a rock and sent it scattering, he was sure the sound would put those Midgard on his trail, and each time he looked back over his shoulder, searching for a black shape that blotched out the stars and meant his end. But nothing came.

He arrived at their house out of breath. The light beside the door shone baleful red on the spot where his father parked his mech suit; the spot was for the moment empty. Maybe father had moved it. He shouldn’t have, it would have taken yet more of his blood, but it would be typical of him. Father would have to use up this vial and more tonight if those Midgard came looking.

Dammit, Asmundre. You ruined everything again.

“Pa!” Asmundre called as he burst through their front door. The icebox had gone out, fallen silent, only black lines left on it’s surface. Fantastic. “Pa!”

He withdrew the vial of plasma from his pocket. The roaring fire framed his father’s chair which had it’s back to the kitchen, just the top of his father’s head visible over the top. He must have fallen asleep after moving the mech. Stupid. He had to be quick. He took one of the bags off the table, slotted the vial into the valve at the bottom, and filled it. Then, he took the needle from the drawer. It would hurt going in, but he didn’t have time to sharpen it.

“I got the plasma,” Asmundre said. “We’ll have to pay back Bjorn, and he only gave us one vial, but it will be enough.”

Plasma worked better than blood. In a person, anyway. It would have to be enough.

Stepping around the chair, Asmundre took his father’s cold hand, and felt along his elbow, where previous injections had left purple bruises. Fingers shaking, Asmundre pressed the needle into his father’s arm. The fire made sweat bead on his back.

No blood welled where he pricked his father’s skin. “Pa?” Asmundre dropped his father’s cold hand.

He was trying to inject plasma into a corpse.

Asmundre jumped back, knocking over his father’s foot stool. His father’s feet slammed down onto the floor, and the man did not react. No, no, no. This was bad. Very, very bad. Much worse than the Midgard coming.

And then he realized something else. Where was Lillian? His father wouldn’t get less dead. He had to find Lillian. Now.

Something crashed in the workshop, just as it had a few hours ago - that felt like a different time already. Asmundre could feel his life splitting apart, just as it had the day his mother had died; there would now be a before and an after and nothing could be the same again.

Taking a knife from the drawer in the kitchen, he crept into the night. Please be Lillian. But… if Pa had moved the mech then died, did she know? Would she have left father alone? Would she have panicked, called out for Asmundre, gone to the village to find him? Maybe they had passed somewhere as he came back up. She could be out there in the night right now.

Someone cursed in the workshop. Definitely not his sister. The door stood open casting out a wedge of light into the night.

His father wouldn’t hesitate. He’d rush in there and - But Asmundre wasn’t his father. He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t brave. He wasn't even really a man. He couldn’t just run in and - Something rattled inside. Trash, was Lilian in there? Asmundre turned the knife in his hand to point the sharp edge forward and dove through the door.

He scanned the workshop, knife held before him. It had been ransacked. The mess his father made turned into a disaster, bits and scraps scattered across the floor, the shelves turned over and dented. His father’s mech stood in the middle of the room, obviously having been driven there. A man rose from the rubble behind it, half way through the grunt, using the mech to lift himself. Hair plastered across his forehead by sweat, his face streaked with blood and grime. Blue coat, torn. Silver buttons. Midgard.

The man looked up just as Asmundre reached him.

“Whoa!” He grabbed at Asmundre’s gauntlet, both hands pushing the knife away as Asmundre barreled over him and drove him to his back on the ground. “Whoa, kid! Stop! I surrender! I surrender!”

Asmundre dragged his hand back and held the knife poised to stab. He squinted at the man’s dirty face, past the man’s raised hands. “You - surrender?”

“Aye. Don’t stab me.”

“You killed my father.”

He looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh - no. I’m sorry, he was dead when I got here. I didn’t know anybody else lived here.”

“What about my sister?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“I didn’t see any woman.”

The knife shook in Asmundre’s hand. “She’s a girl. A little girl.”

“I didn’t see her. I didn’t. Look, I just got here, okay. Nobody was here. I was just trying to get this mech working.”

Asmundre glanced at his father’s mech. “So you could steal-”

All the opening the Midgard needed. He slammed into Asmundre’s gut, driving the air out of his lungs, and Asmundre crashed backwards. His head smacked against the floor and stars leapt before his eyes. He swung wildly with the knife and felt it skid off something hard, the shock of the blow wrenching it from his hand. Before he could climb back to his feet, the Midgard was at the door.

The man leaned against the frame and reached out one hand as Asmundre rose, palm outward. “Okay, okay, I’m not going to be able to outrun you.” He indicated his leg, which he held at an odd angle. “You’re right I was going to steal it. When I came upon it, I thought the all father had left it here for me. But I didn’t know there was still someone to claim it.”

Asmundre searched the rubble for his knife. “You just attacked me.”

“You were the one with the knife kid.”

Fair enough. “Then what are you doing here?”

“Running. Well, was.” He indicated his leg again.

“You’re Midgard.”

He bent to rub his leg. “I guess. Either I’m not anymore, or I’m the last one. I can’t tell. I certainly don’t support them. I think we got off to a bad start, though. I can’t blame you, you did find me ransacking your garage. If you mind not stabbing me - My name’s Yohan. What about yours?”

“Asmundre.” He couldn’t find the knife. Not that he knew what he would have done with it anyway. “What’s wrong with the mech?”

“Needs blood.” Yohan shrugged. “I was just trying to find the reservoir. And -” Yohan’s eyes drifted from the mech to Asmundre’s arm. “It hasn’t got one, has it?”

Asmundre didn’t know what to make of this Midgard. He seemed different from those other two. “I don’t know what that is, so I’d say probably not.”

“You’ve got the touch, haven’t you?”

“So what if I do?”

“Shit.” Yohan laughed, until it turned into a cough. He wiped blood off his mouth with his sleeve. “Your sister had the touch too, didn’t she?”

“Don’t talk about my sister,” Asmundre barked, crossing the junk toward him.

Yohan raised his hand, gesturing again for Asmundre to stop. “Okay, listen a minute before you try to kill me again. I think I know where your sister went.”

Asmundre froze. “Go on.”

“Two Midgard - Hugo and Jorge. You’d know them if you saw them. Hugo is a giant, drives the Thorn Hammer. Jorge is a little guy. A lot shorter than you.”

Fuck. “Yeah we met.”

“They were up here. I saw them. I hid and waited for them to leave before I came down. They were looking for me, and my mech, so this is all kind of my fault. If she had the touch, then those two must have taken her.”

Several things clicked together at once. “You were flying that mech that crashed.”

“Aye.”

“You killed my father.”

“Hey now, that’s a stretch isn’t it?”

“No!” Asmundre darted across the workshop and grabbed Yohan by the lapel. “We almost died in that junkquake you caused. He used too much blood to keep us safe. Then he died because of you. And if there hadn’t been a quake I wouldn’t have gone down to the village and met those two thugs, and they wouldn’t have come up here and taken Lillian!”

“Okay so that’s not much of a stretch.”

Asmundre grabbed the man’s throat with his gauntlet, heedless of the pain that lanced through his arm when the needles dug in and drew out his blood.

“But, urgk -” Yohan sputtered “- look, I didn’t know that. I was just trying to escape. Running.” He grabbed at Asmundre’s gauntlet with one hand.

“It’s your fault.”

“I’m not denying that. But - dammit, son. Will you look down?”

Asmundre did. He couldn’t help it. Yohan held a knife in his other hand, a barb on the end, the point prodding Asmundre’s navel.

“You’re going to let me down, and I’m not going to stab you, deal?”

“Why shouldn’t I crush your neck?”

Yohan pushed the knife forward just enough for the point to slip through Asmundre’s coat. “You go right ahead and I’ll go right ahead stabbing and we can both die here. It’d be kinda poetic, actually. But if you want your sister back, you’ll listen to me.”

Ugh. Fine. He let Yohan down and stepped back, flexing his gauntlet.

Yohan rubbed his neck. “You know what I was running from?”

“No. You deserted. Why should I care?”

“Knowledge. I was running from what I learned. You know what you have that I don’t?”

“A missing sister?”

“That.” Yohan pointed at Asmundre’s arm. “Not the metal. The touch. I don’t have it, and I fly one of those things. Nobody has it. Do you know why? Do you know what they do to kids who have the touch?”

How was he supposed to know?

Yohan raised the knife and mimed passing it over his arm. “They take their blood. Not much of it, of course. You can get a lot more blood out of someone if you don’t take too much of it at once.”

“That’s insane.”

Yohan nodded. “I thought so too. Until I saw it. If you want to get her back before they start sticking needles in her, we’ll have to act fast.”

An image of Lillian in the clutches of those two goons leapt to his mind. He shuddered at the thought of Jorge driving a needle into her arm. She’d be crying out for father. And for him.

“I can’t fly anymore,” Yohan said. “My leg - I might have broken it in the crash. I’m not sure yet.” He shuddered. “And I don’t want to. I think of how much blood I’ve burned through over the last ten years and - and maybe I should have let you stab me. But you have the touch.”

“So what? Does that matter now?”

Yohan flipped his knife around in his hand and extended the hilt toward Asmundre. “You want to pilot a blood mech, kid?”